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Jelly, Meat, for Cold Pies
Scald and prepare a calf's foot, and put it into a stewpan with half a pound of the knuckle of a leg or shoulder of veal, two shallots, a small bunch of savoury herbs, an onion with two cloves stuck in it, a lump of sugar, and the thin rind of half a lemon, a tea-spoonful of salt, half a tea-spoonful of cayenne, and three quarts of cold spring water. Bring the liquid to a boil, remove the scum carefully as it rises, and simmer gently for five or six hours. Run the jelly through a bag, and let it stand aside until cold. Take away the sediment and the fat, and pour the gravy into the pie through an opening in the cover. The flavour of this jelly should be varied with the dish for which it is required. If for a chicken-and-ham pie, the neck, bones, and trimmings of the chicken should be stewed with the gravy, together with half a pound of lean, uncooked ham, or the rind of bacon soaked, scraped, and cut small. If for hare or game pie, the bones and trimmings of the hare or game should be used. Sufficient for three pints of gravy. Probable cost, 1s. 8d.
This is aspic for filling a raised or cold pie after baking, thickened entirely by collagen from a calf's foot rather than by packet gelatine. Nothing here is difficult, but the temperature at which you pour it decides whether it works.
- The hinge: pour barely warm into a cold pieThe pie must be completely cold and the jelly cooled to the point where it is syrupy and just short of setting. Hot gravy poured into a cold pie melts the fat under the crust, soaks the pastry and leaves a hollow cavity when it sets.
- Never let it boilDon't let it boil hard -- the recipe brings the liquid to the boil once, then asks for a gentle simmer with the scum lifted as it rises, and that is what keeps the jelly clear. A rolling boil emulsifies the fat back into the liquid and gives cloudy, greasy aspic that straining alone will not fix.
- Calf's foot and substitutesA calf's foot is a special order from a traditional butcher; two split pig's trotters give a comparable set and are easier to find. If you use neither, a well-flavoured veal stock reduced to three pints and set with about 1 oz (four 7 g sachets) of powdered gelatine per quart gives a jelly firm enough to slice.
- Three quarts down to three pintsThe recipe expects roughly half the water to go in five or six hours of simmering, so keep the lid ajar rather than sealed. Judge by volume at the end, not by the clock.
- "Run through a bag"A jelly bag, or a colander lined with a double thickness of scalded muslin. Let it drip without pressing or squeezing, which pushes sediment through and clouds the result.
- The cayenneHalf a teaspoon of cayenne in three pints is a robust seasoning, and cold savoury jellies do taste flatter than hot ones. Taste before straining and scale it back if you want the veal and herbs to come forward.
- Lemon rindPare only the thin coloured zest. Any white pith left on turns the finished jelly bitter as it concentrates.
- Yield and keepingThree pints, enough to fill several pies. Cooked meat stock is an excellent growth medium, so chill it rapidly in a shallow container, keep it refrigerated, and use within two or three days or freeze it in portions.
- Probable cost1s 8d is late-Victorian retail pricing, quoted because Cassell's readers were expected to cost a dish before cooking it. It has no modern equivalent worth calculating.
Cold raised pies were a staple of the Victorian sideboard, the buffet and the picnic hamper, and jellied gravy is what makes them possible: it fills the gap left as the meat shrinks in baking, seals the filling from air, and slices cleanly. That the book gives the jelly its own entry, with instructions to vary it according to whether the pie holds chicken and ham, hare or game, shows how much of nineteenth-century cookery was built on the by-products of butchery. A calf's foot was cheap, sold widely, and valued precisely for the collagen that commercial powdered gelatine later replaced; the same foot did duty in invalid broths and sweet calf's-foot jelly. The bacon rind "soaked, scraped, and cut small" is the same thrift at work, used here for the salt and savour it lends rather than for any meat on it. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, a large single-volume reference for middle-class households, arranged such entries alphabetically alongside the finished dishes, on the assumption that a cook would look up the component as readily as the pie.